Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1454376
FEATURE I STATE OF AMERICAN FLAT TRACK PART 2 P100 could do that. Kawasaki could do that. KTM could do that. Build your own. "And I don't think it's always about the motor or the chassis. I think sometimes it's the people that are working on them." Even those at AMA Pro Racing, such as Technical Director David McGrath, sympathize. He would greatly prefer speeding the com- petition up rather than increasingly penalize the gold standard. And he argues, that's exactly what's been attempted for years without much tangible success. "The last several years, we've come off the rules in areas we never thought we would," he said. "We've freed up produc- tion-based machine rules— displacement, sophisticated electronics—in an effort to not go after the people who did it right." Meanwhile, Indian Motorcycle is in agreement that the sport needs to grow, and that increased manufacturer support is a vital part of that. Where it differs is how it sees that actually getting done. For starters, Gary Gray, Indian Motorcycle Vice President of Racing, Technology and Service, takes issue with the semantics related to what should qualify as "production-based." Gray argues that the exis- tence of what are in essence production racers—such as the RS250R two-stroke Grand Prix bikes Honda offered to customer teams and privateers from the '80-'00s and the modern-day Indian FTR750—directly ad- dresses the concerns that make production-based racing prefera- ble even when lacking any direct ties to a road-going street bike. Gray said, "The reason pro- duction rules exist in AMA or FIM is to prevent somebody with a lot of funding from building an unob- tainium bike that no one can touch. And what they do is put in rules that if your components are openly available to any par- ticipants, if there's been limited numbers of runs, then you're considered production. "Indian Motorcycle has been racing since we've been around. "I just want to have great racing at every race from today forward. How do we get there? Let's figure it out and get it done. And if some of the Indian teams and riders feel that's kind of crappy... I don't argue with that. I agree with them." – Terry Vance